You used to be able to know if you had any app updates by looking in the device list. If there were updates, it would have a number next to the 'Apps' entry, like it does with unwatched TV shows or unread podcasts. You'd click on the 'apps' section, and there'd be a button along the bottom saying something like 'get updates'. You clicked that, it showed you all the apps that needed updating and you'd click 'update all apps' and all your app updates would be downloaded. Next time you synced, the updates would be passed across. Frequently (if you had a number of big apps to update) this was actually quicker than doing it over wifi.
Now, you still get the number next to 'apps' in the devices list but when you click on the 'apps' section, the 'get updates' button has disappeared. You have to find an app that needs updating (they have a small ribbon on their icon to say so) and double click on it. That takes you the list of apps that need updating - if you click on an app here you now get the 'change log' for the app, the same way you get the track list in the album view for music, and there's an 'update all' button you can click which does the same thing as before.
The question is : why the hell did they take the 'get updates' button away? What point did that act serve? If you only have a few updates to do you end up scrolling through a huge list of app icons looking for the odd one that has the ribbon to double click on. As oppose to the 'get updates' button, which was obvious, always onscreen and always in the same place. It's.. it just seems a pointless and retrograde change.